How Viget Labs Helps their Employees Thrive
13 June 2014
I am impressed with Viget Labs. They’ve built a thriving business based on a culture-first approach.
I met Peyton Crump at a meetup where he gave a talk on finding meaning at work. The more I talked to him, the more I was impressed by the culture at Viget Labs, where Peyton works.
I asked if he’d be willing to write about what makes Viget’s culture so great and he graciously agreed:
What three things do you love about the culture at Viget?
First, let me immediately cheat, and say that I love Viget’s seven virtuous virtues (http://viget.com/about). I love them because they’re simply true and play out in more ways than I could possibly capture here:
- Innovation
- Quality
- Respect
- Integrity and Authenticity
- Hard Work and Commitment
- Measurable Results
- Like Family
Second, I appreciate Viget’s culture of transparency and openness:
- Weekly: on Fridays, the whole company has lunch together (on Viget) and we connect the offices and remote employees virtually to go over the Lab Report, which captures all of the internal news, project news, and new business updates from across the company.
- Quarterly: We take a company-wide time-out for one day and the founders and leadership team share goals, wins, challenges, and finances for half the day. It’s a level of sharing that seems rare to me. Then we celebrate and team-build the second half of the day. It’s great.
- Annually: Viget operates on a peer review system, where the peers you’ve worked with throughout the year share areas in which they’ve seen you excel and areas where they think you can improve. It’s extremely valuable and pertinent feedback, not uninformed guesswork by a detached manager.
Thirdly, I’d say I appreciate our focus on community and sharing:
- Viget’s always had an open-source, knowledge-sharing mentality. A true belief in “let’s all help each other be better”. We blog (http://viget.com/blogs), speak, and plan and attend all kinds of industry events.
- We give back to our communities. Every employee has two days a year for community service, and we regularly do pro-bono work for non-profits that we’re passionate about.
How is the culture at Viget different than other companies?
- Not sure, I’ll let people draw their own comparisons/contrasts based on what they’ve experienced.
What makes me the happiest?
- Man, that’s tough, but I’d have to say that it’s a culture of humor and laughter. The founders are funny guys themselves, so I think Viget has naturally followed their lead. In a driven, often stressful environment, humor and smiles and laughter can sure help keep things light and bring a much-needed balance and relief to all kinds of situations.
For more, see our News & Culture blog (http://www.viget.com/flourish
